Writings from the Ancient World
Theodore J. Lewis, General Editor
Associate Editors
Billie Jean Collins Jerrold S. Cooper Edward L. Greenstein Jo Ann Hackett Richard Jasnow Ronald J. Leprohon C. L. Seow Niek Veldhuis Number 19 Mesopotamian Chronicles by Jean-Jacques Glassner Edited by Benjamin R. Foster
by
Jean-Jacques Glassner
Edited by
Benjamin R. Foster
Society of Biblical Literature
Atlanta
Mesopotamian Chronicles Copyright © 2004
Society of Biblical Literature
Original title: Chroniques Mésopotamiennes, presentées et traduités par Jean-Jacques Glassner, copyright © 1993 by Les Belles Lettres, Paris. English translation arranged with the approval of Les Belles Lettres from the original
French edition, including additional material supplied by the author.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Glassner, Jean-Jacques. [Mésopotamie. English]
Mesopotamian chronicles / by Jean-Jacques Glassner ; edited by Benjamin R. Foster. p. cm. — (Writings from the ancient world ; no. 19)
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 1-58983-090-3 (paper binding : alk. paper)
1. Iraq—Civilization—To 634. I. Foster, Benjamin R. (Benjamin Read) II. Title. III. Series.
DS73.2.G5313 2004a
935—dc22 2004012445
12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paper conforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994
The past . . . is a reconstruction of the societies and human beings of for-mer times by men and for men caught up in the network of today’s human realities.
— Lucien Febvre, preface to Charles Moraze,
Trois essais sur Histoire et Culture
Concerning the flood, and Noah: it was not by chance that he took so long to build his ark. No, Noah wished to delay the flood, he dragged out the work, feeling that something of the sort would happen, that it was for a purpose that God had given him the order to build the ark. Noah was not anxious to separate himself from the world, steeped in evil, yet nonetheless familiar. He felt nostalgia for the present world, which belonged already more to the past, to a remote past that would fall into oblivion, for the waters would wash away all the roads leading there, and would carry off everything that could allow anyone to form some idea of it. . . . Noah suffered from nostalgia for the present, because he was alone in possessing a future. . . . The new world was unknown.
— Saulius T. Kondrotas, L’Ombre du serpent
For the supreme honor, to which the king attached the highest value, was to triumph over the gods of his enemies, whom, in spite of their gods, he had led into captivity. And when we asked them why they were kept in chains, they replied that [the king] intended, when he entered the town of Uzangué, to which he was making his way, to have them dragged in these same chains in triumph, following the victory won over them.
Series Editor’s Foreword ...xi
Abbreviations...xiii
Babylonian Calendar...xvi
Explanation of Signs and Conventions...xvii
Preface ...xix
Part I: Mesopotamian Historiography I. The Future of the Past ...3
Part II: Analysis of the Compositions II. Definition ...37
III. Contents ...55
IV. Genesis ...95
V. Diachrony ...101
Part III: The Documents VI. The Royal Chronicles ...117
1. Chronicle of the Single Monarchy ...117
2. Continuators: An Old Babylonian Fragment from Nippur ...126
3. Continuators: The Babylonian Royal Chronicle ...126
4. Continuators: The Hellenistic Royal Chronicle...134
5. Continuators: The Assyrian Royal Chronicle ...136
6. A Parody: The Royal Chronicle of Lagass ...144
VII. Sumerian Chronography ...156
VIII. Assyrian Chronicles ...160
A. Eponym Chronicles 8. Eponym Chronicle (Second Millennium) ...160
9. Eponym Chronicle (First Millennium) ...164
B. Other Chronicles 10. Synchronistic Chronicle ...176
11. Chronicle of Enlil-naaraarıi (1327–1318) ...184
12. Chronicle of Arik-deen-ili (1317–1306)...184
13. Chronicle of Tukultıi-Ninurta I (1243–1207) ...186
14. Chronicle of Assssur-reessa-issi I (1132–1115) ...186
15. Chronicle of Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076) ...188
IX. Chronicles from the Neo-Babylonian, Persian, and Seleucid Periods ...193
16. From Nabonassar to SSamass-ssuma-ukıin (745–668) ...193
17. From Nabonassar to Esarhaddon (748/747–669) ...202
18. Esarhaddon’s Chronicle; Beginning of the Reign of SSamass-ssuma-ukıin (680–668) ...206
19. From the End of Assssur-naadin-ssumi to the Revolt of SSamass-ssuma-ukıin (694–652) and a Few Earlier Reigns ...210
20. Chronicle of the New Year’s Festival (689–626) ...212
21. Chronicle of the First Years of Nabopolassar (626–623) ...214
22. Nabopolassar and the Fall of the Assyrian Empire (616–609) ...218
23. Chronicle of Nabopolassar (608–606)...224
24. The Death of Nabopolassar and the First Years of Nebuchadnezzar II (605–595) ...226
25. Chronicle of the Third Year of Neriglissar (557) ...230
26. Chronicle of Nabonidus (556–539) ...232
27. Fragment of a Neo-Babylonian Chronicle ...238
28. Chronicle of the Fourteenth Year of Artaxerxes III (345/344)...240
29. Chronicle concerning Darius III (335–331) and Alexander (330–323)...240
30. Chronicle of the Diadochi (321/320–309/308) ...242
31. Mentions of Arses (337–336) and of Alexander the Great (330–323) ...246
32. Chronicle from the Time of Antiochus I, Crown Prince (294/293–281/280) ...248
33 Chronicle of Seleucus I (311 or 305–281/280) ...250
34. From Antiochus I (281–260) to Seleucus II (245–226) ...252
35. Chronicle of Seleucus III (225/224–223/222) ...252
36. Chronicle from the Seleucid Period ...254
37. Judicial Chronicle ...256
X. Babylonian Chronicles of Ancient Kings...263
38. Chronicle of the Esagila...263
39. Chronicle of Ancient Kings ...268
40. Chronicle of Ancient Kings ...270
41. Fragments of a Chronicle of Ancient Kings ...272
42. Fragments of a Chronicle of Ancient Kings ...274
43. Fragment of a Chronicle of Ancient Kings...276
44. Fragment of a Chronicle of Ancient Kings...276
45. Chronicle of the Kassite Kings ...278
46. Chronicle of the Last Kassite Kings and the Kings of Isin ...282
47. Chronicle of the Kings of Babylon from the Second Isin Dynasty to the Assyrian Conquest ...284
48. Uruk Chronicle concerning the Kings of Ur ...288
XI. Putative Chronicles ...293
49. Fragments of a History of Ancient Kings ...294
50. Chronicle of Market Prices ...294
51. Religious Chronicle ...296
52. Chronographic Document concerning Nabu-ssuma-isskun ...300
53. Chronographic Document concerning Nabonidus ...312
Bibliography ...319
Indexes Proper Names ...345
Theonyms ...358
Writings from the Ancient World is designed to provide up-to-date, readable English translations of writings recovered from the ancient Near East.
The series is intended to serve the interests of general readers, stu-dents, and educators who wish to explore the ancient Near Eastern roots of Western civilization or to compare these earliest written expressions of human thought and activity with writings from other parts of the world. It should also be useful to scholars in the humanities or social sciences who need clear, reliable translations of ancient Near Eastern materials for com-parative purposes. Specialists in particular areas of the ancient Near East who need access to texts in the scripts and languages of other areas will also find these translations helpful. Given the wide range of materials translated in the series, different volumes will appeal to different interests. However, these translations make available to all readers of English the world’s earliest traditions as well as valuable sources of information on daily life, history, religion, and the like in the preclassical world.
The translators of the various volumes in this series are specialists in the particular languages and have based their work on the original sources and the most recent research. In their translations they attempt to convey as much as possible of the original texts in fluent, current English. In the introductions, notes, glossaries, maps, and chronological tables, they aim to provide the essential information for an appreciation of these ancient documents.
The ancient Near East reached from Egypt to Iran and, for the pur-poses of our volumes, ranged in time from the invention of writing (by 3000 B.C.E.) to the conquests of Alexander the Great (ca. 330 B.C.E.). The cultures represented within these limits include especially Egyptian, Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, Hittite, Ugaritic, Aramean, Phoenician, and Israelite. It is hoped that Writings from the Ancient World will
ally produce translations from most of the many different genres attested in these cultures: letters (official and private), myths, diplomatic docu-ments, hymns, law collections, monumental inscriptions, tales, and administrative records, to mention but a few.
Significant funding was made available by the Society of Biblical Literature for the preparation of this volume. In addition, those involved in preparing this volume have received financial and clerical assistance from their respective institutions. Were it not for these expressions of confidence in our work, the arduous tasks of preparation, translation, editing, and publication could not have been accomplished or even undertaken. It is the hope of all who have worked with the Writings from the Ancient World series that our translations will open up new horizons and deepen the humanity of all who read these volumes.
Theodore J. Lewis The Johns Hopkins University
AA American Anthropologist
AAASH Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae AfO Archiv für Orientforschung
AfOB Archiv für Orientforschung: Beiheft
AION Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli
AJ The Antiquaries Journal
ALASP Abhandlungen zur Literatur Alt-Syren-Palästinas und Mesopotamiens
AnSt Anatolian Studies
AOAT Alter Orient und Altes Testament
AoF Altorientalische Forschungen
AOS American Oriental Series
ARM Archives royales de Mari
ArOr Archiv Orientální
ARRIM Annual Review of the Royal Inscriptions of Mesopo-tamia Project
AS Assyriological Studies
ASJ Acta Sumerologica Japanensis
ASOR American Schools of Oriental Research
AuOr Aula orientalis
BaM Baghdader Mitteilungen
BASOR Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research
BBVO Berliner Beiträge zum Vorderen Orient
BCH Bulletin de correspondance hellénique
BCSMS Bulletin of the Canadian Society for Mesopotamian Studies
BM Bibliotheca Mesopotamia
BO Bibliotheca orientalis
BRM Babylonian Records, Pierpont Morgan Library
BSOAS Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies CANE Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Edited by Jack
Sasson. 4 vols. New York: Scribner, 1995. CBQ Catholic Biblical Quarterly
CM Cuneiform Monographs
COS The Context of Scripture. Edited by W. W. Hallo and K. L. Younger Jr. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1997–2002.
CT Cuneiform Texts from Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum
CTN Cuneiform Texts from Nimrud
DDD Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Edited by K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P. W. van der Horst. Leiden: Brill, 1995.
ErIsr Eretz Israel
FAOS Freiburger Altorientalische Studien
GN geographical name
HR History of Religions
HSS Harvard Semitic Studies
HUCA Hebrew Union College Annual IEJ Israel Exploration Journal
JA Journal asiatique
JAOS Journal of the American Oriental Society JCS Journal of Cuneiform Studies
JEOL Jaarbericht van het Vooraziatisch-Egyptisch Gezelschap (Genootschap) Ex oriente lux
JHS Journal of Hellenic Studies JNES Journal of Near Eastern Studies JSS Journal of Semitic Studies
MAOG Mitteilungen der Altorientalischen Gesellschaft MARI Mari: Annales de recherches interdisciplinaires MDAI Mémoires de la délégation archéologique en Iran
MJ The Museum Journal
MSL Materialien zum Sumerischen Lexikon
NABU Nouvelles assyriologiques brèves et utilitaires
OBO Orbis biblicus et orientalis
OECT Oxford Editions of Cuneiform Texts
OIP Oriental Institute Publications
OLA Orientalia lovaniensia analecta
OLP Orientalia lovaniensia periodica
Or Orientalia
OrAnt Oriens antiquus
OS Orientalia Suecana
PAPS Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society
PN personal name
RA Revue d’assyriologie et d’archéologie orientale
RANE Records of the Ancient Near East
RIME The Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Early Periods RlA Reallexikon der Assyriologie. Edited by Erich Ebeling et
al. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1928–.
RS Revue de synthèse
SAA State Archives of Assyria
SAAB State Archives of Assyria Bulletin
SAACT State Archives of Assyria Cuneiform Texts SAAS State Archives of Assyria Studies
WAW Society of Biblical Literature Writings from the Ancient World
S.E. Seleucid era
SEL Studi epigraphici e linguistici
SM Sources and Monographs
StudOr Studia orientalia
TCL Textes cunéiformes. Musée du Louvre
TCS Texts from Cuneiform Sources
TIM Texts in the Iraq Museum
TUAT Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments. Edited by Otto Kaiser. 3 vols. Gütersloh: Mohn 1982–2001.
UrET Ur Excavations: Texts
UF Ugarit-Forschungen
UMB The University Museum Bulletin
UVB Vorläufiger Bericht über die (. . . ) in Uruk/Warka unter-nommenen Ausgrabungen
VAB Vorderasiatische Bibliothek
WO Die Welt des Orients
WZKM Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes
YOS Yale Oriental Series, Texts
Babylonian Calendar
Nisan March–April Iyyar April–May Siwan May–June Dumuzi June–July Ab July–August Elul August–SeptemberTessrit September–October
Arahhsamnu October–November
Kislev November–December
T˙ebeth December–January
SSebat January–February
Addar February–March
italics Akkadian transcription is set in italics, while Sumerian is set in roman. Italics are also used to indicate an uncer-tain restoration or rendering in the translation.
-ra2 Indices (subscript) are equivalent to sign numbers; they
have no phonetic relevance.
-buki Determinatives (superscript) indicate semantic classes;
they are not to be read.
X A capital X represents an unidentified sign.
. . . An ellipsis marks a gap in the text or untranslatable word(s).
KESS Capitals indicate that the reading of the sign in context is unknown or uncertain.
[ ] Brackets enclose restorations.
< > Angle brackets enclose signs omitted by the scribe. ( ) Parentheses enclose additions in the translation.
(!) An exclamation point indicates an unusual or aberrant form.
(?) A question mark indicates an uncertain reading in the transcription or a doubtful rendering in the translation. ˆ/ e A circumflex or macron indicates a long vowel.
h˙ The h with underdot represents a fricative h sound not found in English
hh The h with underbreve indicates a sound like “kha.” ’ The single apostrophe represents a glottal stop.
sß The s with an underdot indicates an emphatic s sound not found in English. It was pronounced like ts but fur-ther back in the mouth.
sg The s with acute accent represents a lateral s sound not found in English. It was pronounced with the tongue
held halfway between the English position for s and sh, but flattened out.
ss The s with hacek was pronounced like English sh. t† The t with an underdot represents an emphatic t sound
not found in English
Intent upon delving ever deeper into the most infinitesimal detail of factual data, in order to give an ever more precise account of the peculi-arities of the universe, the Mesopotamians sought to order their ideas and experiences in written form. Convinced that knowledge of the past enabled them to explain the present and to be better prepared for the future, eager to understand the swift passage and erratic flow of time, lead-ing inexorably toward death, the Mesopotamians wrote history as well. This undertaking was not, to be sure, driven solely by disinterested thirst for knowledge. In a universe where the gods constituted the ultimate explanation, humans, ambiguous beings of clay and divine blood, played an essential role in the durability of cosmic order. They were conscious beings, informed of divine intentions; they were privileged to know the names, and thus the future, of every thing and every creature; by their piety and maintenance of the cult they enabled the processes of the uni-verse to function. Dwelling at the center of the earth and at the heart of the cosmos, powerful in their knowledge, a king to lead them—for only the monarchical model was upheld—humans had their task to perform.
Throughout nearly two long millennia, the oldest documents dating from approximately 2200 B.C.E., the most recent from roughly 140 B.C.E., to reflect on the lessons of time gone by, men of letters wrote histories, biog-raphies, annalistic narratives, prophecies, and chronicles: collections of facts reported in the sequence of their occurrence. The diversity of these works and the richness and variety of the information they contain make them works of reference, and the sheer bulk of their achievement inspires admiration. The Assyrian eponym chronicles, for instance, list, year after year, from the beginning of the second millennium to the middle of the first B.C.E., the accessions and deaths of kings, the names of the high officials of state as well as of their subordinates, and the annual objectives of mili-tary campaigns. They remain today a valuable guide for reconstructing the
remote past of humanity, interred beneath the debris of more than two thousand years. These texts, unfortunately, as if their laconic style were not sufficient, are sometimes poorly preserved, the clay tablets that serve as their medium having, in general, resisted poorly the ravages of time. Some of them are in an advanced state of deterioration, so any attempt to read them is inevitably frustrating. But the Assyriologist, perhaps better than any other historian of antiquity, knows that he or she works with little save bits and pieces, scraps and disconnected fragments.
The chronology of Mesopotamia before the thirteenth century (except in instances indicated in the text, all dates are understood to be B.C.E.)
remains provisional. This is owing primarily to different ways of interpre-tating astronomical events recorded by ancient scribes. In this study the so-called “middle chronology,” which is most generally followed, will be employed.
This book is an English translation of a work that appeared in France in 1993, under the title Chroniques mésopotamiennes. Its purpose goes beyond a text edition to present a selection of more or less homogeneous documents to an interested and informed readership. Since 1993, Irving Finkel, keeper at the British Museum, has found several new chronicles or fragments. These documents are still unpublished, and because the right of publication belongs to their discoverer, they cannot take their place here.
The preliminary English translation of parts 1 and 2 was made by Nicolas Wyatt, extensively revised by Benjamin R. Foster. Part 3 was revised by Foster from my own English version. I would like to thank Bob Buller of the Society of Biblical Literature for his remarkable work in preparing the volume for publication. Finally, I wish to thank the editors of the Society of Biblical Literature for accepting this book in their series Writings of the Ancient World and Benjamin Foster for his editorial and translation work and for numerous suggestions, corrections, and updates incorporated into the text. I have taken the opportunity to update the 1993 text with the needs of an English-speaking readership in mind.
The Future of the Past
As its etymology indicates, the term historiography denotes the writing of history. This being said, the word turns out to be remarkably ambigu-ous, and dictionaries offer various definitions. The peoples of Sumer and Akkad had no such term, yet they produced a voluminous historical liter-ature. We shall, therefore, so far as possible, given the tenuous evidence, examine this literature and the social status and cultural background of its authors. The writing of history has never been solely the preserve of sci-entific endeavor carried out in isolation. Mesopotamian historians, because they were intellectuals, and also because they normally lived close to great people in a society profoundly influenced by religion, were scarcely unaware of the ideologies they were helping to sustain, as shown by their way of writing.
Mesopotamia is a crossroads where many ethnic groups have mingled, each bringing, as so many accretions, its own traditions while unconsciously letting itself be shaped in a common mold, in a kind of ever-renewing synthesis, into which was absorbed, to a large extent, the heritage of more ancient cultures, at once assimilated and modified. Thus we may speak of Sumerian, Amorite, Babylonian, or Assyrian historiographies. Furthermore, wherever a temple or palace was built, intellectual activity flourished; schools grew up in all cities where the literate strove to cultivate their par-ticular skills. The history of Babylonia under Assyrian control was conceived of and written about in different ways, depending on whether one was in Babylon or Uruk.1
History, explains Cicero, is the narration of true facts. Cicero was heir to a centuries-old tradition going back to Hecataeus of Miletus, an innova-tor who, rejecting myths and heroic genealogies as “ridiculous,” opened the way to history. Mesopotamia had no Hecataeus, and the break between the spheres of myth and legend and history was never quite achieved. The narrators believed in the truth of their accounts, whether
they were myth or history, and since they thought them true, the differ-ences between myth and history diminished and blurred.2This went so far
as to produce a hybrid form, myth using historical categories and history becoming “mythologized,” in order to achieve exemplary significance and universal perspective. Mixture of the genres is still found in Berossus,3who
wrote as a Hellenistic historiographer but incorporated native mythological traditions in his history of Babylonia.
Autonomous historical discourse in Mesopotamia was not achieved until very late, by the authors of certain Neo-Babylonian chronicles. This was a new departure, giving rise to a new form of discourse, a historiog-raphy deliberately avoiding tales of origins. But let us not be deceived: this new historiography was not devoid of religious beliefs, nor did it consign them to ancient fable. We can avoid the question of the origins of histori-cal writing, since in Mesopotamia, like everywhere else, there was no mute society, without history. The constructive role of memory is a constant in all human societies.4As far as one can reach into the past, the very means
of exchange that existed in archaic Mesopotamia already implied a certain consciousness of existing in time.5The innovation consisted of committing
to writing remembered facts in the form of a hitherto unattested literary genre. We sense that this new interest was linked to political motivation. The monarchy of Akkade, which, without precedent, unified the entire Mesopotamian territory under a single authority, seeking to consolidate the foundations of its new power, commissioned men of letters to formulate the principles of its organization and to write its history. Two examples are sufficient to illustrate this point. First, an inscription of King Naraam-Sîn, who expresses himself in these words:
Naraam-Sîn the mighty, the king of Akkade. When “the four quarters (of the earth)”6together rose up against him, through the love Is
star held for him, he won nine victories in a single year and captured the kings whom (the rebels) had brought (to the throne). Because in adversity he had been able to maintain the defenses of his city, its inhabitants expressed the wish to Isstar in Ayyakkum,7Enlil in Nippur, Dagaan in Tuttul, Ninhhur-sag in Kess, Enki in Eridu, Sîn in Ur, SSamass in Sippar, and Nergal in Cutha, that he should be a “divinity” of their city, and they built his dwelling in the middle of Akkade.8
Stylistically and semantically, this inscription is a new departure. Not con-tent with establishing the facts in sequence, as was formerly the practice, it offered a programmatic vision of political institutions and their function-ing. The royal initiative consisted of winning the consent of the assemblies of the principal cities of the land in order to bestow on the sovereign a new title, better suited to his exceptional charisma, that of “divinity,” which, by metonomy, came down from the divine to enter the human sphere.9
The second document is a tiny scrap of a school text dating from the reign of Naraam-Sîn or his successor Sgar-kali-sgarrıi. Discovered in a private house in Tell Asmar, we owe it to an apprentice scribe, and a very clumsy one at that. In it we can still read two phrases, taken from a larger work.10
[At Kiss, the population in] its [entirety] indeed brought Iphhur-Kiss to the throne. Iphhur-Kiss made an alliance and Lugal-ane, the king of Ur, has-tened to him.
——————————
No (?) ruler . . . [ . . . ] . He established [kin]gship and the we[ll-being(?)] of his land. ( . . . )
Too fragmentary for a fully satisfactory interpretation, this excerpt is no less a witness, because it is a school text and not a royal inscription, to the exis-tence at this time of an otherwise lost historiographical literature. Tradition would later recall Iphhur-Kiss and Lugal-ane. The figure of Iphhur-Kiss, raised to royal rank by the assembled army and whose name means “He gathered Kiss” or, by one of those graphic games so dear to the ancient Mesopotamians, “He gathered the totality [of settled lands11],” contrasted
with Naraam-Sîn, grandson of Sargon, the founder of the empire, who embodied, opposite an elective form of monarchy, the practice of heredi-tary power. There was, therefore, in the Akkade era, a confrontation between two forms of power, two forms of legitimacy. A trial of arms would decide in favor of one of them. The historiographical literature reflects this.
As for the expression “we[ll-being(?)] of his land,” ss [ulum ] maatissu, the restoration is convincing and is not insignificant. It may be seen, some cen-turies later, in an inscription of Sgamsgıi-Addu I of Assyria, who declared that seven generations separated one of his own exploits from ssulum Akkade. The Akkadian word ssulmu (m ) is ambiguous, denoting the full realization of a state or its complete ruin: scholars hesitate between the translations “apogee” and “downfall.” The presence of the word in association with the concept of royalty in the present Old Akkadian school text favors the for-mer. Later, in an omen, the word is found yet again associated with Akkade.
If the “paths” are doubled, and the second is drawn behind the “crucible,” their “mouths” to the right and left touching, it is an omen of Sgar-kali-sgarrıi, destruction of Akkade. The enemy will sweep down on your “well-being.” If it is an expedition: a leader of my army will not return.12
Finally, the school text is like an echo of Naraam-Sîn’s inscription cited above: “well-being,” ssulmu (m ), is in effect opposed to “adversity,” pussqum, the term that in the inscription referred to the disastrous situation from
which the king saved his capital and his realm. This tablet fragment shows, then, that because royal authority continued to grow and scribal activity grew along with it, as its inevitable complement, people began to write variations on the official version, intended to reinforce still further the pres-tige of the sovereign.
History was an activity of the mind. Dipping into the ocean of events, or cutting particular swatches from the fabric of history, the learned writer made selections, manipulated facts, and constructed narratives. One need only consult the different versions of the Assyrian annals to be convinced of this. Apart from the fact that they were scarcely the place to refer to military reverses or to events unconnected with the main purpose, they were compiled at different times during kings’ reigns, so that new cam-paigns were added and the narrative of previous camcam-paigns often abbreviated or completely reworked. For instance, the descriptions of the first campaign of Sennacherib became, with the passage of time, increas-ingly brief and allusive, going so far as to omit certain important episodes, such as the flight of Marduk-apla-iddina or the enthronement of Beel-ibni. The latter even ended up being supplanted by Assssur-naadin-ssumi, his suc-cessor on the throne of Babylon, as if Assyrian power sought to erase all memory of an episode that had been a setback for it.13Nor were annals
the only occasion for such manipulation. In another context, certain diviners had noted that Naaram-Sîn of Akkade had captured a town by the name of Apissal. Some of these diviners made an assonantal wordplay between the wording of the omen, the presence of perforations (Akka-dian root plss ) on the sheep’s liver, and the toponym Apissal, in which they identified, by metathesis, the same root (plss < pssl ). From this they put forward a new proposition, according to which, since the sheep’s liver had perforations (plss ), the king must have conquered the city ( pssl ) by means of making a breach (also plss ). Reworked in this fashion, the wordplay was augmented, and the historical episode became part of a cognitive series in the art of siege warfare, for diviners, always obliged to make circumstantial responses to precise questions asked of them, could then associate different omens with different tactics: the taking of a city by assault, hand-to-hand fighting, breaches, sappers, siege engines. A king of Mari even asked, concerning the conquest of a city, “Why have you taken the omens concerning weaponry but not the capture of cities?” The new omen may even have resulted from the convergence of two series of propositions, one referring to the capture of Apissal, the other to the conquest of any fortified city by means of a breach in the fortifications. Other diviners went still further by fabricating other, similar, omens, inspired by the example of Apissal: all they had to do was to introduce a fresh nuance into the prognosis or to change the toponym in the omen.14
Thus history distorted reality.
What this demonstrates is that articulation of the social and of the imaginary need not be reduced to a binary scheme of classification: the two sets interpenetrate to a point it is difficult to draw a line between them. To put it another way, the only historical facts are those the historian deems worth remembering. “Lest it be fogotten,” proclaim certain histori-cal texts of the first millennium, borrowing an expression belonging to the vocabulary of law or of commercial transactions, and at the same time lending a further intellectual dimension to the social function of memory.15
Time was the basic component of history. It was a powerful force, governing all things, that could be propitious for some activities but dan-gerous for others; it was even sometimes considered as a demiurge. Time past was called in Akkadian paanaanu or mahhru, “formerly,” that is, “before,” while the future was called warkaatu, “that which is behind.” Sur-prisingly, the Akkadians, and the Sumerians as well (for whom e g i r , “behind,” also meant “the future”), advanced backward toward the future while looking toward the past,16following the example of Gilgames
s, who, in the Akkadian epic, advanced toward the unknown to which he turned his back: “When he had gone seven double-leagues, dense was the dark-ness; it would not let him see what lay behind him.”
Mesopotamia did not know linear time. Two concepts of time devel-oped simultaneously, insisting on the ideas of duration and of cycle. The first was time that flowed on, conceivable and manageable by a calendar, divisible into equal, measurable units of time that were all cyclical—years, months, and days—and referred to by the Akkadian words daaru and duuru, from the same Semitic root dwr, which means “to turn, to move in a cir-cle” and denotes a time that proceeds from a point of departure but has no future limit. Mesopotamian historians17 were concerned primarily to
locate events in this first concept of time, which is also that of chronology. One curious document lists the names of the kings who reigned after the flood, of whom it is expressly stated that they are “not arranged in chrono-logical order.”18
Royal inscriptions are full of such indications. In Assyria, Tukultı i-Ninurta I (1243–1207) considered that Ilu-ssuuma (the dates of whose reign are uncertain) preceded him on the throne by 720 years,19while
Tiglath-pileser I (1114–1076) noted that Assssur-daan I (1178–1133) and Sgamsgıi-Addu I (1808–1776) reigned respectively 60 and 641 years before him.20Later,
Sen-nacherib (704–681) estimated that Tiglath-pileser I had preceded him by 418 years.21 Nabonidus (555–539), the last king of Babylon before the
Achaemenid conquest, computed the time separating him from Naraam-Sîn (ca. 2202–2166) at 3,200 years and from SSagarakti-ssuriass (1245–1233) at 800 years, while HHammurabi (1792–1750) had reigned, also according to Nabonidus, 700 years before Burna-Buriass II (1359–1333).22 According to
from Sgamsgıi-Addu I, while 159 years separated the latter from Eerissum I (whose regnal dates are uncertain).23 Concerning these same intervals
between these same reigns, Esarhaddon’s (680–669) historians expressed very different opinions: according to them, 580 years separated his reign from that of SSalmaneser I, the latter was separated from Sgamsgıi-Addu I by an interval of 434 years, and the last from Eerissum I by 126 years.24 Thus
the computations of ancient historians could vary. However, it did not mat-ter much, in the final analysis, for chronology allowed things to be put in perspective and, because of the great antiquity of the examples cited, guar-anteed legitimacy to the deeds of the ruling sovereign, whose reign fit into a longue durée. What Mesopotamian monarch, boasting of such remote predecessors, was not moved by a “longing for immortality” (or “eternity”), certain that his rule would endure? Several Sumerian and Akkadian expres-sions refer to duration and promise “eternal” life or kingship, where we have to understand “eternal” to mean so long as the life or kingship of the gods endure. One of these, u ’ u l l i ’ e ss e , ana uumıi sßâti, ana sßât uumıi (the Akkadian versions mean “until the day of going out” or “until the going out of days”), expresses the idea of a past approaching the present to move off into the future.25The author of a Neo-Babylonian letter was at pains to
clarify the expression “forever” in these terms: “for future days, day after day, month after month, year after year,”26where “day” stressed the
alter-nation of day and night, “month” the alteralter-nation of full and new moon, “year” the alternation of seasons. All these expressions insistently recall the fact that history is the story of mortals. Gilgamess himself exclaims, regard-ing the plant that will give him immortality and that he names “old, man is rejuvenated”: “I shall eat of it myself and shall recover my youth.”27In
other words, immortality means to recover youthfulness.
The second concept of time was the cyclical, expressed by Sumerian b a l a and Akkadian palû.28 The latter term, denoting periods separated
from one another, can also mean “change.” This mode of time can be imagined by reference to the cycles of the seasons and the succession of the generations. Reckoning generations, that is, connection with ances-tors, counts for more than the distance that separates them. This naturally calls to mind the genealogies given in the Sumerian epics, where a cer-tain king is provided with an ancestor drawn from the ranks of the gods. We think too of the writing of history as practiced by the scribes of King En-mete-na of Lagass, when they narrated the century-long war between the two rival cities of Lagass and Umma. The accent was put not so much on the chronological progression of events as on the names of the pro-tagonists and the genealogical connections they shared over three generations.29 Most of all, one thinks of the Amorite royal genealogies,
where the past was simply a reflection of the political and social condi-tions of the present time.30
Both notions of time were not unrelated to each other, public celebra-tions and familial rituals constituting so many links connecting them, but history was not exclusively a matter of events. It had another motivation, of a biographical nature, in the sense that it was concerned with the great deeds and exploits of sovereigns and with their personal lives. In a world that accepted innovation only with difficulty, always seeking examples and precedents, one invoked the past to explain the present, the arsenal of his-tory furnishing weapons of many kinds, sometimes surprising ones. Spiritual and economic life, on the other hand, were subjects scarcely to be found, nor was there much interest in conscious, subconscious, or uncon-scious motives: no Mesopotamian Tacitus wrote a psychological history.
When the land of Ibbıi-Sîn rebelled against him, it looked like this. When the Subareans, having exchanged messages with Issbıi-Erra, turned away in another direction, it looked like this.
When the king rallied to his cause a country that had hitherto been his enemy, it looked like this.
If Amurru is reduced, it will look like this.
If an enemy plans an attack against a city and its plan is revealed, it will look like this.
If the enemy musters with hostile intent but the prince’s [army(?)], how-ever considerable it may be, is not powerful enough, (it will look like this).31
Such is the testimony of some of the oldest divinatory documents known today. They appear on liver models from Mari dating from the first centuries of the second millennium. A relationship was established between an omen appearing on a liver model, reinforcing the text, and to which the formulae “it looked/will look like this” made reference, and an oracle was set forth in the text.
This evidence can be divided into two series. In the first, the verbs are in the past tense, the diviner having recorded the memory of a past observation, deducing a prognosis from an omen. Divination was a sci-ence based on experisci-ence and looked toward the past as the source of its inspiration. In the second, the diviner, surprisingly, deduces the omen from the prognosis. Furthermore, the verbs being in the present-future, the proposition consisted, implicitly, of considering a link between a social fact and a natural occurrence, a priori coincidental, as a necessary correlation, likely to recur in analogous fashion in the future. In other words, the diviner extrapolated for the future from the configurations and connections of the past. In short, this series indicates that, at the turn from the third to the second millennia, the diviner’s thought was discon-nected from empirical knowledge and was established as a system. At
this point we may no longer speak of this as an empirical culture. A reciprocal relationship had been established between nature and culture, and the world order depended, in the final analysis, on human attitudes, since it was permissible to infer the configuration of a sheep’s liver from a political or military event. Interest in the past was further validated by this development.
However, if the world was not understood using the category “progress,” the sole intimation of which was self-glorification of kings that they had achieved what no king before them had done (though this may be understood as an archaic equivalent of the idea of progress, the idea of potentiality to act), it was not felt to be in a static condition. The category “change” existed, and in the juridical vocabulary of Akkadian the expres-sion ana duur u pala, “for continuity and change,” meant the totality of future time. Furthermore, “rotation” did not mean simple repetition, because each repetition generated new content. The Mesopotamians did not reread ad infinitum the pages of the same book, nor were they passive spectators of the same performance repeated ad infinitum. The relationship between the past, the present, and the future was founded not on strict repetition but on similarity.32
In short, the study of the past fell under the rubric of analogy, history being a cyclical process, hence made up of recurrent events and peopled with avatars. According to a Sumerian tradition, Naraam-Sîn of Akkade acted contrary to a decision of the gods expressed in omens that forbade him to build a temple. Similarly, Amar-Su’en, the third king of the royal dynasty of Ur, was in turn, according to another tradition and other omens, pre-vented from restoring a ruined temple.33
From an early period, dazzled by its unrivaled brilliance, Assyria set the dynasty of Akkade as a model. From the eighth century on, as attested in the historiographical compositions from the library of Assssurbanipal, the dynasty of Akkade became a paradigm for the historians of the Sargonid era, who considered that every historical cycle formed a system and that, with the passage of time from one cycle to another, allowing for variations, there existed between wording and content the same unvarying relation-ships.34 Even if Esarhaddon still referred, in the manner of some of his
predecessors, to former King Usspia as though to a distant ancestor of his on the throne of Assyria, it was granted that with the dynasty of Akkade, beginning with the story of the birth of Sargon, the type of the Promethean hero who established cosmic order, with his exposure on a watercourse and the trials by which he demonstrated his legitimacy, until that other story of the irruption, like a flood, of a foreign mountain people, the Gutians or the Ummaan-manda, in the reign of his grandson Naraam-Sîn, a complete, exemplary cycle of history had run its course, constructed like a landscape peopled by highly individual characters.35
The Babylonians took little stock in these theories. For them, Sargon of Akkade was a fatherless child, in other words, a man of no antecedents, who was not of royal stock and could be seen as a usurper.36Playing on
the writing of his name, they made him who had declared himself the “rightful king,” LUGAL.GI,37into a “rebel king,” LUGAL.IM.GI.
Who wrote history in Mesopotamia? The birth of a discipline requires a place, rules, a stylistic form, and, ultimately, humans. Beyond that, we are completely ignorant. Normally Mesopotamian writings are anonymous; at best we know the name of a copyist, and the few notable exceptions, such as Saggil-kıinam-ubbib, author of the Babylonian Theodicy, or Kabti-ilıi-Marduk, author of the Myth of Erra, scarcely make up for this gap.38We
have, indeed, an ancient list of authors, but a document that begins by cit-ing gods or creatures of legend is hard to take seriously.39Access to writing
implies, in any case, that authors graduated from a school where they had mastered the use of a written language different from the spoken one.
Were there, on the other hand, autonomous intellectual elites, not depending on any political class but based simply on individual qualities and intellectual aptitudes? Is not the most ancient historiographical docu-ment from the hand of an apprentice scribe working in a private house in Tell Asmar, from the last third of the third millennium? Later, there were private libraries in the Old Babylonian city of Ur, in the Middle-Assyrian city of Assssur, and in the Neo-Assyrian library of Sultantepe, which belonged to one Qurdıi-Nergal, himself a priest of the god Sîn, all of them containing historical works.40 Later still, in Babylon, men of letters
col-lected and copied a series of historiographical works that they assembled in their libraries.41 Finally, in Uruk, in the Seleucid period, the library of
the scribe Anu-beelssunu, son of Nidintu-Anu and a descendant of the exor-cist Sîn-liqi-unninnıi, the putative author of the Gilgamess Epic, contained other historiographical compositions.42
It is clear that throughout Mesopotamian history some families of scribes extending over several generations controlled most literary pro-duction. Some of them, in the Hellenistic period, claimed descent from a distant ancestor supposed to have lived in the Kassite period. These fami-lies played an important role, since they were responsible for the transmission of source material from the middle of the second millennium down to the Seleucid period. Did palaces and temples really play the part often credited to them in the composition, copying, and transmission of literary and historical works? Let us not misunderstand. Between the intel-lectual, political, and religious spheres lay no insurmountable barriers. Qurdıi-Nergal was himself a priest. The temple of SSamass at Sippar housed a rich library containing historical texts.43 The temple could also employ
men of letters, as did the assembly of the Esagila, the temple of Marduk in Babylon, which agreed to pay salaries to the astronomers charged with the
making of daily observations and recording them on tablets.44Among the
families of scribes, some were traditionally retained by kings, such as that of Arad-Ea of Babylon, while others were in the employ of temples.45
Finally, how could we forget that in 703 a provincial notable, a member of a great family of scribes, led a revolt and ascended the throne of Babylon under the name Marduk-zaakir-ssumi (II)?
One tradition has it that to each reign should be assigned a sage, apkallu, or a learned man, ummânu. A list already alluded to begins with the name Adapa, contemporary of Alulu, the first antediluvian king, con-cluding with that of Aba-Enlil-daari, better known by his Aramaic name Ah˙iqar,46 who is assigned to the reign of Esarhaddon. According to the same list, Kabti-ilıi-Marduk lived at the end of the third millennium, at about the time of Ibbıi-Sîn, an egregious error, since he composed the Myth of Erra in the second half of the ninth century, probably in the reign of Mar-duk-zaakir-ssumi. Regardless of errors and legendary features, a tradition still has it that literary production was associated with royal power. Without even mentioning Assssurbanipal, who collected a vast library in his palace at Nineveh,47we know that Nabû-apla-iddina, Marduk-za
akir-ssumi’s predeces-sor, was directly associated with a considerable amount of editorial work.48
Did the historian live in the shadow of power, musing on the power that he himself did not have? We cannot tell if a post of official historian existed, having office, title, and salary, solely and singly charged with writing the history of the state that retained him. The hypothesis that Isstar-ssuma-eeress, head of the palace scribes and scholar, ummânu, in the reigns of As sssur-banipal and Assssur-etil-ilaani, was the author of a synchronous king list49 cannot be verified. On the other hand, we do know that in the Persian period Scylax of Caryanda made a voyage at the expense and on the instructions of Darius I, Nehemiah was the cupbearer of Artaxerxes I, Cte-sias of Cnidus, the physician of Artaxerxes II, and Ezra, perhaps, a functionary in charge of Jewish affairs.
Still according to the same ancient list, to which should be added the evidence of colophons, the authors or compilers of the large literary and historical works were engaged, for the most part, in the professions of exorcist, aassipu, lament singer, kalû, or diviner, barû. Chance has it that archives or libraries of such specialists have been found here and there, such as the archives of the lament singer Ur-Utu at Sippar50or those of the
diviner Asqudum at Mari51 and above all the library of Ba‘al-Ma
alik, “scribe of all the gods of Emar.”52This last contained several works of a
historio-graphical nature. Among all these people, the diviners formed a sort of corporation with its own officers. They were specialists who could carry out these functions along with others that might attach them to a temple or a palace, but without overlap. For the most part, they were in the serv-ice of the king. In the Sargonid era, the Assyrian kings normally provided
to the astrologers, dispersed among various cities, houses, lands, and the staff to run them. Although we know less about the organization of exor-cists and lament singers, it seems there were in fact intellectual elites, among whom the diviners, exorcists, and lament singers were prominent. These elites may be described as heterogeneous groups having complex relations with each other and among which none was the sole repository of a fully specialized knowledge.
On the fringe of historical interests, there developed during the first millennium a certain antiquarianism. We know of the taste of the Chaldean kings of the sixth century for historical research and of the religious motives and genuine historical interest that inspired them, of their attempts to reforge some of the broken links with the past to strengthen their own claims to legitimacy. Veritable museums were established in which original pieces sat side by side with copies. There was perhaps a museum in the palace in Babylon from which possibly some thirty objects have been found, among which were several statues from Mari, an inscription of SSulgi, and a stela of Darius I.53The Egipar at Ur, the residence of the high
priestess, also housed a museum where one could admire, among other items, a foundation cone of Kudur-mabug, an inscription of Amar-Su’en of Ur, as well as a copy of it made in the seventh century “for display” (?) by the lament singer Nabû-ssuma-iddina, son of Iddin-Ilabrat, when it was rediscovered by the governor of the city Sîn-balaassu-iqbi.54Finally, at
Nip-pur a jar has been found in the Neo-Babylonian level containing a score of inscribed objects from all periods, notably a map of the city and its envi-rons;55these may well have been items in a collection of antiquities.56
Private individuals took an interest in antiquities as well. The scribe Nabû-balaassu-iqbi, son of Misßiraya, copied the “tariff” of King Sîn-kaassid of Uruk from an original preserved in the Ezida, the temple of the god Nabû at Borsippa;57 the apprentice scribe Bala
at†am, son of Balihhu, copied the same text;58 and another apprentice scribe, Re
emuutum, copied an inscrip-tion in Sippar of HHanun-Dagaan, king of Mari.59We are more familiar with
the activities of the scribe Nabû-zeer-lıissir, son of Itti-Marduk-balaat†u, a descendant of Nabunnaya and author of a number of legal documents from Babylon in the reign of Nabonidus. He took an impression of a stone inscription of Sgar-kali-sgarrıi found in the palace of Naraam-Sîn at Akkade60
and copied an inscription of Kurigalzu II engraved on a brick from the Bıit Akıiti in the same city.61This scribe affected writing contracts for which he
was commissioned using archaizing script, as favored in certain royal inscriptions of the period, particularly those of Nebuchadnezzar II, in “ancient” style. These examples are enough to show that the work of these scribes was not simply a reflection of personal quirks.62
There are those who, fortified with the teachings of Herodotus and Hegel, would characterize the first form of history as a narrative of things
“seen.” Would the first historian have been a witness? Certainly Gilgamess was one “who had seen everything,” preserving for posterity the narrative of his own life. Oral memory must have played its part where one knows that custom was a practice nowhere set down and where every social activity gave rise to a public ceremony in which it was expected of the wit-nesses that they would later testify to what they had seen. Regarding the Assyrian annals, a mural painting in the palace at Til Barsip represents two “military” scribes watching a battle and taking note of the events; one of them is writing on a tablet in cuneiform, with a stylus, while the other is writing with a pen on a scroll, probably in Aramaic alphabetic script.63 It
is probable that scribes noted from day to day the episodes of campaigns at which they were present and that these “notes” were subsequently con-sulted at the time of the composition of annals.
Mesopotamian historians nevertheless privileged the written account. In Mesopotamian law, this substituted quite naturally for oral testimony, and judges accorded to the “speech” of the tablet the same value as the declaration of an eyewitness. Moreover, was not the written memory, which was not set down until what it recorded was read and scrupulously verified, an integral part of the system of apprenticeship?
Thus historians copied official texts, royal correspondence, or oracular utterances of a historical nature. They drew up chronological or genealog-ical lists, dynastic lists, or lists of year names. All these works could be, if not sketches for chronicles or the starting point for history, at least the beginnings of archives. And they also composed archives.64 It has been
shown, for example, that from the correspondence of the empire of Ur, only the letters dealing with the Amorite question were selected for study and copying, the task of copying them entering the curriculum of the apprentice scribes in their schools in the Old Babylonian period.
Since history was supposed to preserve a sure memory of the past, its norms of credibility had to be established. The first task of the historian consisted, therefore, in the faithful citation of the material being copied and the correct identification of sources. To be more precise, when it was a matter of the reproduction of a document or the compilation of sources, the copyist or compiler had to guard against any personal contribution or addition, however minimal. In the case of the statue of HHanun-Dagaan, for instance, the copyist, using an original from which the royal name had been lost, avoided restoring the name and noted instead on his copy the word hhipi, “(it is) broken.”
However, the work of the historian did not stop there. A recently edited copy of an inscription of Naraam-Sîn of Akkade offers a striking peculiar-ity.65The tablet appears to reproduce a single inscription of this king, with
an initial titulatury and a closing curse formula, but the body of the text consists of a number of military adventures, the account of which is several
times segmented, the scribe not copying passages he considered repetitive. In fact, preparing a new inscription that linked various events occurring separately throughout his reign, the scribe placed end to end excerpts selected from several original royal inscriptions, each of which dealt with a different campaign. Thus was reinforced the historiographical theme of the great revolt engulfing Naraam-Sîn.66So documents that had no intrinsic
connection to each other could be patched together.
At the end of the sixth century in the Greek world, Hecateus of Mile-tus clarified a rudimentary comparative process, intended to correct and rationalize legendary tales, consisting of consultation with outside wit-nesses. Herodotus’s laughter at the multiplication of maps demonstrates, not long afterward, the progress made in the critical treatment of sources. Whereas scribes exercised a certain critical faculty with regard to their sources when they looked for graphic variants, which at times they were at pains to mention, no Mesopotamian historian ever compared or even mentioned different versions of the same event. Moreover, he never cited his sources. In short, history was not a science with a coherent methodol-ogy, and its most obvious weakness lay in its approach to documents.67
The historian also transferred a piece of information from one branch of knowledge to another, from archives to a narrative. Did not writing, then, given the fragility of the tools and methods in use, run the risk of presenting as truth a discourse that might be only a fable? Others have shown that in other geographical regions an authentic historiographical undertaking may well incorporate legend and myth.68
If, finally, we leave aside the work of copyist and compiler, who made books out of books, on the ground that by definition they had no style of their own, we can scarcely isolate a specific historical style. The study of historiographical works, whether prose or poetry, simply demonstrates the relative unity of style of the time.
Among historiographical works, we may distinguish copies and com-pilations from actual literary works.
COPIES AND COMPILATIONS
These consisted of assembling written texts and thoughts of others, or, if one likes, the composition of unified texts from various written fragments. COPIES OFROYALINSCRIPTIONS
Isolated inscriptions were written on small tablets, and collections of inscriptions were arranged in uncertain chronological order on large tablets. This genre, particularly esteemed in the Old Babylonian schools of Nippur and Ur, was practiced over two whole millennia: the earliest examples
known date from the end of the third millennium.69 In every period the
inscriptions of the kings of Akkade and Ur were the most prized.70
Comparison of the original and the copy, when possible, demonstrates the remarkable fidelity of the latter, which reproduces with great attention to detail the original document, maintaining the original grammar and lay-out of lines. There are, however, some exceptions. One copy shows instructive characteristics: it begins in the middle of a sentence and ends with an incomplete one; it is strewn with abbreviated words and informa-tion not in the original, representing overall an original synthesis of numerous inscription fragments, one after another. Other copies consist of only initial written signs of the original lines; their purpose was no doubt purely mnemonic.71
COLLECTIONS OFROYALLETTERS
The royal correspondence of the empire of Ur is partially preserved, thanks to the collections of copies made by scribal students from the Old Babylonian period, epistolary material being at that time a school subject. In contrast to the copying of royal inscriptions, the language of corre-spondence was modernized, since scribes used the grammar of their time.72 Among the different letter collections, one thematic element
determined the choice of material: all letters dealt with the Amorites, who lived at the time of the Ur dynasty on the northwestern and northeastern frontiers of the empire. Some scraps of the royal correspondence of Isin and Larsa were likewise preserved; they dealt in particular with problems of irrigation.73
LISTS OFYEARNAMES
Two principal methods were used in Sumer and Babylonia to permit individual years to be identified within the flow of time: they were named by reference to an event or numbered from an arbitrary starting point. Between 2400 and 2350 the habit grew up in Uruk, Ur, and Nippur of indi-cating the date by reference to some noteworthy event at the beginning of the year or from the preceding year, such as “the year in which the high priestess of the god Nanna was chosen by means of the oracular lamb.” This system afterward became general practice and lasted until about 1600; it only ceased finally in the course of the thirteenth century. After that, years were calculated by reigns, numbered from the completion of the first year of a king’s reign.
In order to preserve a record of their chronological order, lists of year names were drawn up. These could be of various lengths, going so far as to cover 168 or 169 names, nor were they immune to mistakes: sometimes
year names were interpolated.74 The end result might suggest to us
com-pilation serving primarily administrative or juridical purposes, but the extent of the longest lists far exceed requirements for such purposes, so we may discern in them the products of genuine chronological inquiry. EPONYM LISTS
Assyria was distinctive in that it invented its own dating system, which it maintained faithfully for a millennium and a half: the “eponym” system. In this, years were named after high officers of state. Drawn at first by lot, they were later determined according to a strict hierarchical order, which, however, kings might sometimes change. Eponym lists were drawn up as chronological reference works but were no more exempt from error than Babylonian lists.75
KINGLISTS
These made it possible to fix the order of succession of kings and generally went beyond the span of one dynasty. However, the mention of royal names alone was insufficient to make them useful for chronog-raphers, and historians wishing to locate events in time and to find a way to date them added the number of years of each reign. The king lists stretched from the end of the third millennium to the Seleucid era. Among them, synchronous lists set the reigns of Assyrian and Babylon-ian kings in parallel.76
HISTORICALPREDICTIONS
The Mesopotamians thought that the universe was permeated by a complex network of homologies, which tended to bring into relation mat-ters that otherwise seemed remote from each other. Humanity, nature, and the cosmos existed in reciprocal relationships, each adjusting, communi-cating, and responding to one another. This network of sympathies was countered by groups of incompatibilities that enclosed species in their own specificity, and “evil forces” that destroyed symmetry existed. History, with its discontinuous time fragmented into numerous segments variously charged qualitatively, indefinitely repeatable yet fully dissociated one from the other, could not transcend these general laws, which divination illu-mined with ever-sharper focus. Thus someone could write, no doubt in the reign of Sennacherib, a “mirror for princes” setting out to offer a gen-uine lesson from experience that no ruler should ignore but consisting of a collection of omens that listed, in the form of oracles, unfavorable con-sequences of bad policy.77
Like so many indicators hitherto unnoticed but thereafter noteworthy, historical omens established the link between human history, the cosmos, and nature. Astrology in particular projected history into the vastness of space, the perception of which astronomy continually enhanced, tending to define cycles of history that corresponded to the motions of the stars and planets. Thus a link was established between lunar eclipses and human actions, the lunar eclipse being associated, according to the month and the year in which it occurred, with a different city or country.
Learned treatises existed that consisted of endless series of sentences, each comprising a protasis and an apodosis. The protasis set out a feature of the object in question in the form of a conditional proposition, while the apodosis stated the consequence deduced from it in the form of a main proposition. All these compositions emerged from educational methods and a mindset made possible by the development of writing. The sen-tences were arranged in a fixed order, in which another feature of Mesopotamian rationality may be discerned: a predilection for dualistic or triadic organization of the subject matter, using opposing or complemen-tary pairs or triads containing a midpoint between two extremes. Following this course, diviners sought to isolate successively particular ominous patterns among all those that presented themselves simultane-ously to their view and attempted to read in them what was applicable to human existence in terms of individual or collective destiny. For every pattern given prominence, a relationship with a specific event in social life was posited.78
Several collections of historical omens survive.79 They are, however,
generally dispersed in the body of treatises. With a few striking exceptions— legendary characters such as Gilgamess, Etana, or Queen Ku-Baba;80local
rulers such as King Sîn-iddinam of Larsa or Daadussa of Essnunna;81 even
Assssurbanipal,82who reigned in the seventh century—we see that the royal
names included are primarily of those who ruled over a united Mesopotamia and that the periods explored in this genre are those of Akkade, Ur, and Isin,83either in the final third of the third millennium or
the first two centuries of the second.
The information reported in the historical omens is deemed by some to be episodes without any real historical interest.84How could the
pur-pose of history be anecdotal?85Anecdotes can, of course, satisfy curiosity,
and, though divination was a science of the real, it could incorporate past experience in its own logical schemes. Diviners, obliged to offer a precise answer to any question that might be asked of them, since the inquirer was never satisfied with a vague reply, thought through past events according to the principles that governed all their cognitive processes and sought to establish homogeneous series made up of so many specific and virtually “repeatable” facts, which could serve as prototypes.86
DIARIES
At the latest from the time of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, system-atic astronomical observations were duly catalogued by professional specialists, and augmented with notes, concerning fluctuations in prices, bad weather, rises in water levels of the rivers, and occasionally historical events. These last pieces of information were admittedly rare and of unequal value. Local history was given priority, such as cultic ceremonies, but also fires and epidemics. Other events of greater political moment and consequence were also recorded, but more or less as asides.87
LITERARY COMPOSITIONS
There was no literary genre known as “historical literature.” Neverthe-less, histories, annals, pseudoautobiographies, prophecies, and chronicles were composed. Histories were written in poetic style; the other composi-tions were written in prose.
HISTORICALNARRATIVES
Historical narratives, like myths and epics, were written in verse. These works, in which no dates were required, were decked out in accordance with the best conventions of epic poetry, with a pronounced taste for nar-rative situation, debates between protagonists, divine assemblies, divine assistance to heroes, the leadership qualities of the victors, and the villainy of the vanquished. This writing of history relied on a theology of sin and punishment, the impious king being punished by defeat. In Babylonian texts, even at the price of certain anachronism, the supremacy of Marduk was everywhere prevalent.88
The oldest historical stories, including the narrative of the youth of Sar-gon of Akkade (the only composition in this style composed in Sumerian),89date from the Old Babylonian period. Later the genre was
cul-tivated in Assyria and Babylonia.90
ANNALS
Written in the first-person singular, as if the kings themselves, always victorious, were their authors, recounting their own exploits, annals were situated on the frontier where memory was transformed into history. This kind of commemorative inscription belonged to Assyria; the Babylonians made no use of it. It appeared under Tiglath-pileser I.91 Unlike ordinary
royal inscriptions devoted to the account of a single campaign, annals col-lected accounts of several successive campaigns and were always arranged
